port access problems in 1.1.99.1

[Richard White <Richard@qc.edu>]

Hi:
I'm having what have so far turned out to be insoluble problems with dosemu 
(1.1.99.1) under Redhat 9

1) Current status/environment:
RedHat 9 (kernel 2.4.20), with Dosemu 1.1.99.1 and matching freedos binaries 
installed per instructions, which worked as specified.  To be able to check 
on possible permissions issues, it was installed separately both in my user 
home and in root's. 

~/dosemu/conf/dosemurc has been changed as follows:-
$_com1 = "/dev/ttyS0"
$_printer = "lpr"

After the above, all DOS apps I have tried seem to run nicely EXCEPT in regard 
to port access, as follows:-

1) On trying to print from DOS, (either via e.g. "copy autoexec.bat LPT1:"or 
via DBase III, which otherwise runs correctly, and which prints to LPT1:), we 
get the same error message:
"lpr: unable to print file client-not-found"
This same message appears whether or not I am running as root.

2) On starting an app that needs Com1, we get a message  "error initializing 
serial port"  I do not know where this is generated.  as above, the message is 
the same whether running as root or as a normal user, so permissions may not 
be the problem.  

 I have checked permissions as follows:-
A) /var/lock = 777 (note that in RH9, the only content of /var/lock seems to 
be a 'subsys' directory, which - is this a configuration issue that needs to 
be addressed?  ( i have tried changing the value of ttylocks to match (i.e. 
to /var/lock/subsys), but with no effect)

B) /dev/ttyS0 = 666 
Thus as far as I can see, i have made all the changes that are normally 
suggested, unless I am missing something.

Has anyone seen behaviour like this, and/or an anyone advise how to diagnose 
this please?

thanks!

Richard White